Catholic Parish Records

Hi Jim,

In case you're not aware of it, www.rootsireland.ie/ might be worth a look.

Col

According to this site, the earliest records start in 1876. Records prior to that have either been lost or were never kept:

http://www.irishtimes.com/ancestor/browse/counties/rcmaps/donegalrc.htm

I have a list of marriages for 1857 only in St. Eunan's R.C. Church, Letterkenny.  If you want to give me some names I can look them up.

That would be great.  The names I'm looking for are John Connolly and his bride Biddy.  I don't have her maiden name.

Thank you,

Jim

Sorry Jim, no marriage record for John Connolly & Biddy in 1857 in St. Eunan's Cathedral.

Thank you for looking.  How about Elizabeth McFadden and John Mulhern?  They lived in Castlewray in 1872 and might have been married in Letterkenney.

Sorry Jim, you are not having much luck!

Thank you!

I am looking for any records for Andrew McMenamin and his brothers James and Patrick who emigrated to New Zealand in the 1860/70s. All three brothers settled in Invercargill where they worked as Roading Contractors.

It seems the brothers' father was named Andrew also.

As Andrew is not a common christian name I thought I would be able to find some record of either Andrew but so far a big zero.

Some years ago a relative of Andrew (by marriage) told me the McManamin family came from Rapahoe but I am not so sure of this.

Can anyone help steer me where best to search

Many thanks

Tony

Jim,

I have obtained 3 more years of marriage lines since your last posting.  I found this record -

18 May, 1854  John Connolly of Raphoe and Brigid Dunleavy of Raphoe.

Tony,

You are probably better starting a separate thread for the McMenamin family to avoid confusion with this existing one.

I searched the index to Irish civil births, deaths and marriages and would agree that Andrew McM is not a common name. I found a handful, all around Castlederg, Letterkenny, Stranorlar & Strabane.  So that?s all around the same area but in Co Tyrone & Donegal. So the information that the family comes from Raphoe fits well with that.

Civil Births, deaths and marriages in Raphoe would mostly have been registered in Strabane, but some townlands were in the Letterkenny registration area.

Death registration started in 1864. Since I don?t see a death for Andrew of the right age group, I?d suspect he died before 1864.

The usual advice in this situation is to search church records for the children?s baptism and perhaps the parents marriage. However in this case Raphoe RC parish records don?t start till 1863, so you are not going to get any information there.

There?s some Raphoe information on this link:

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~donegal/raphoeproj.htm

There?s only 2 Andrew McMs in the 1901 census. Since it?s such a rare name, you might want to look at both families in case they are related. Both are from the right area:

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Donegal/Stranorlar/Ballybofey_Town/1199727/

http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie/pages/1901/Antrim/Woodvale_Ward/C…

Elwyn